


and the life

by toujours_nigel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bring Back Black, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 15:15:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1161208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s been coming to see Sirius for six weeks now, or a little longer, and though Agron has assured him every time that they’re making progress, he’s dismissed it as the polite fiction Healers must tell grieving families. Sirius lies still like the dead, his breath discernible only through the application of a charm or a polished mirror, his arms punctured to let strengthening potions directly into the rich blood in his veins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the life

Remus spends all of June and much of July trying to divide his time between running errands for the Order, running interference between Tonks and Molly Weasley, and wearing out the floor in the corridors of St. Mungo’s, in a manner that might be called even halfway fair. It’s an uphill struggle at best, and he has a week near the middle of the month when he nearly gets himself caught and killed. Tonks, who has taken to partnering him with terrifying frequency, has to smuggle them both into the Muggle Underground with one of her ubiquitous belts bound tight around his arm as a tourniquet. They get strange looks: a tall, greying man in a shabby jumper leaning heavily on a purple-haired girl half his age, blood seeping through his shirt and darkening the denim of her trousers.

At King’s Cross they disembark, and Tonks guides him carefully onto Platform 9 3/4 and onto one of the old iron benches before collapsing bonelessly beside him, panting as though she has just come off the Quidditch pitch. He is quite ten inches taller than her current form, and heavier by far: though they don’t use it to recognise his kind when there are so many surer ways, werewolves have denser bones than humans; after he’d had the Bite he was suddenly pounds heavier, a strangely disorienting thing for a child.

He puts a hand on Tonks’ arm, suddenly solicitous. She’s borne his weight unflinchingly, but her jaw is clenched now, the tendons of her neck standing out against the skin. “How bad is it?”

“Well, you can’t break a Metamorphmagus’ knee,” she says, and that explains the terrible exhaustion in her. Regrowing bones is weary work.

“No, but she had a good try at it, all the same. Come to St. Mungo’s with me, Augustus will fix you up.”

“He’s having an experimental phase again,” she says, and lowers her head almost to her knees. The curve of her spine is perilous, unprotected beneath the thin cloth of her t-shirt. Remus feels like grit, like filth, for letting himself be so distracted.

“I’m sure he wouldn’t try to stitch you up,” he offers and she turns her head to smile at him, her cheek brushing the injured knee, her spine lengthening to accommodate the pose. “Stop being cavalier.”

“I don’t want to chance needles in my flesh,” she says, which he has to admit is eminently sensible, and straightens as a prelude to standing. Her cheek is smeared with blood. “Besides, I’ve to be at Hogwarts in a bit, so I’ll just save it for Madame Pomfrey.”

“But you will get seen to,” he presses, “Nymphadora, it’s not nothing, at least Skele-Gro.”

“It’s Tonks,” she says, and stands with a crackling of bones, every joint slotting neatly into place, and turns her hair bright red. It looks in the twilight as though her head is on fire, and Remus nearly smiles to see it. It is beautiful, in war, to see how easily the young regain energy. “I’ll get it seen to, don’t you worry.”

In the distance the Hogwarts Express comes into view, the exact colour of Tonks’ hair. He says helplessly, watching her hobble to the edge of the platform, “Are you sure you’ll be alright alone?”

The train pulls into place with a deafening whistle and clouds of steam. When it clears again, he can see that Tonks has her hand gripped tight about one of the rails, her entire body poised. There are few enough people on the platform: those who have business in Hogwarts or Hogsmeade in summer usually Apparate to the village, or avail themselves of the Knight Bus. But he doubts anyone would have come near Tonks even were there a moderate crowd, there is a ferocity to her smile that is very nearly feral and hints at danger more through being leashed. She climbs on, making effort look elegant, and says, “Remus, I’m an Auror.”

It is, he supposes, enough of an answer in its way, and says, “I’ll give him your regards.”

She nods, her hair slipping forward and mingling with the red of train. The stain on her jeans reeks of blood. She says, “Mum’s been making plans, we’ll turn up on Thursday, I think. Get our names put on the roster, will you.”

He is certain he wants to ask after her parents, but the train is pulling away already, compensating for the long wait it will have in about a month, so he nods and mimes agreement, refusing to risk matching his shredded voice to the whistle.

Tonks leans out, swinging bodily from the train, and shouts wildly, “Dad’ll be there too! Don’t forget.”

He waves a hand in acknowledgment and makes his way, carefully, out into Muggle London. The full was more than two weeks ago, but he’s spent the last five days trekking the length of Northumbria, culminating in a chase across three counties and pitched battle in a London alleyway with three Death Eaters. Every bone in him aches, but the bleeding has almost stopped. The sun is out, and the Muggles aren’t staring at him in too hostile a manner. A good day, or what passes for one in the readying for war.

 

* * *

 

 

They are quite used to him, now, on the fourth floor of St. Mungo’s, and an Assistant Healer needs to be only very lightly coaxed to see to his arm: it isn’t much to look at, but the wound is deep enough, she tells him, to have cut through flesh and muscle and tendon. He tries to shrug it off, but she fixes a dark eye on him, and says, “I know you do very important work, but you can’t neglect your health.”

An Order member, then; he hadn’t known about her, but then Pye has been very good about networking, and they need as many people in the hospital as they can possibly scrounge up. He signals docile agreement, which does very little to appease her, and makes his way up the corridor. The door to the Janus Thickey Ward is chained from outside, the usual signal for an attempted escape. But they should still let visitors in: he plans to look in on Frank and Alice before he leaves; he tries to make a regular affair of it, but the last time he’d visited them he’d had to spend nearly an hour with Gilderoy bloody Lockhart, who he knows for a fact was born George Locksley. It had left him steering very clear of the place his next two visits to the fourth floor.

The Spell Damage Ward is quite full when he enters it. New beds have been crowded in, and the Healers are obliged to sidle crab-wise through the narrow aisles. It is a better thing than it might look to the untrained eye: every patient in these wards is a patient who has survived. But that might hardly comfort their families, even should the thought occur to them. Sirius’ bed is against the far wall; in another week they’ll move him to Janus Thickey. Remus is holding to the hope, as a last resort, that being around Lockhart will revive Sirius if nothing else does.

Healer Agron, perhaps the only woman in the world who can make lime green look a flattering colour, hustles him back out into the corridor before he’s even properly past the door, and says, “We’ve done it. You’ve Dasgupta to thank, but we’ve pulled it off.”

It takes him some time to even begin to grasp the meaning behind her words. Behind her the ward stretches out in a bustle of green robes and sedated bodies. He’s been coming to see Sirius for six weeks now, or a little longer, and though Agron has assured him every time that they’re making progress, he’s dismissed it as the polite fiction Healers must tell grieving families. Sirius lies still like the dead, his breath discernible only through the application of a charm or a polished mirror, his arms punctured to let strengthening potions directly into the rich blood in his veins. “How long?” he hears himself ask, voice hoarse to the point of growling.

“He should be awake in three days or so. We’ve repaired the damage, now we need only let his body heal.” She frowns, brows drawing together beneath the cap. “There was a lot of damage, I don’t mind telling you now. Older and more deeply rooted too, and not the result of any spellwork.”

It is strange, to apologise for Sirius’ body as he so often feels the need to apologise for his own. “He was in Azkaban”, Remus explains, “for about a third of his life.”

Agron blushes, bites her lip, looks furious with herself. “The Ministry should apologise to him publicly. How old was he?”

“Twenty-one.” Twenty-one and thought himself invincible, the way they all had, the way they all had had to, to have the barest hope of lasting out the day’s horrors.

She says, “Twenty-one!”, mutters under her breath, chews a little longer on her lower lip. They stand at the door to the Ward, awkward and unspeaking, while one of her Assistants comes up to look for her and sneaks soundlessly back, and the girl who’d seen to him earlier who must be the Dasgupta who has found a way to heal Sirius, steals past them without distracting Agron. Remus feels a knot of panic settle in the pit of his stomach. He can read, as clear as anyone else, the signs of an impending storm. Agron is well-liked, respected and likely has enough of a grasp on the Ministry through personal or professional contacts to at least seriously contemplate the notion of forcing an apology for what she must view as gross medical maltreatment. It might work; it might even be a good thing. Remus just wants to sit with Sirius for an hour, or, failing that—and it looks as though they’re far too busy to allow visitors—to look in on the Longbottoms and go home. He hasn’t seen his bed in a week, much less lie in it.

He says, “You’re sure, then, about the three days? I’ll write Harry, he’ll want to be here.”

“Harry?”

“Harry Potter,” he says, feeling almost guilty about trading on Harry’s name. “Sirius’ godson.”

Her eyes widen, but to her credit only momentarily. “Make it a week, by then he’ll be able to speak a little. Now I really must leave you.”

 

* * *

 

 

In the event Harry arrives before he manages to send word: a circuitous affair, usually, that he prefers to accomplish through the Weasleys if absolutely necessary, or avoid if at all possible; owls may be intercepted, and he has, after all, no admissible reasons to correspond directly with Harry. It is a relief, therefore, to slope into Molly Weasley’s warm kitchen with Tonks, and hear that they’re expecting the lad by morning.

“I thought,” he says, accepting a bowl of steaming soup from her after she insists that it’s no trouble and she’d have made it soon anyway, for Harry who is sure to be famished after his sojourn with the Muggles, “that he would come some days later?”

Molly nods, and hands him quite half a loaf of bread. “We thought so too, but Dumbledore said he’d bring him today. Tonks dear, what’ll it be for you?”

“I’m sure it’s about Sirius,” Tonks says, and spears an onion from his bowl. “Met Pye today, said he’s about to wake up. Tea’s fine, Molly, thanks.”

“I didn’t know they were so close,” Molly says, almost suspicious. “Remus, you’ve never said.”

He swallows quickly, nodding all the while. “Last I heard, they said they’ve managed to undo whatever damage Lestrange inflicted.”

“Well. I’m sure Harry’ll be that happy,” Molly says, and sets down a teapot a little too hard. “Merlin knows he’s had a summer of it, I know the letters he’s written Ron. Not that we’ve had it any easier, with a full house and Arthur away at all hours, and even the children...”

Tonks catches his eye, looking suddenly hunted. Early in their acquaintance she’d informed him that if any comforting was to be dished out, it wouldn’t be coming from her, no exceptions. He clears his throat and says, “I’m sure Arthur will be alright, it’s just a busy time for the Ministry.”

It’s a pathetic attempt, but Molly brightens all the same and rather surprisingly. “He’s got a promotion, d’you know? It just happened. Head of the Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects, and ten people reporting to him.”

“That’s wonderful, couldn’t have happened to a better man,” he says, and she offers him a watery smile. “Well, that explains the long hours, doesn’t it, if he’s in charge of so many people? It’s good of the Ministry to have started that Office, too.”

“Yes,” Molly says, with a look at her remarkable clock, all hands pointed at “in mortal peril”. “I suppose so.”

“Absolutely. Longshanks caught a man selling anti-Dementor charms last week,” Tonks says, “Morgan told me Robards found out it was Bubotuber pus in a casing of bicorn horn. And that’s among the better things; some of it’s outright malicious.”

“Who’s Morgan, dear? One of your colleagues at the MLE?”

“She’s one of our Tracers, actually. Brilliant woman, couple years my senior. Used to be a Ravenclaw, back in school.”

“You should ask her to come to dinner this weekend. Mad Eye is coming as well, that’ll be nice for you. And of course Bill will be here.”

“I really don’t think she’s Bill’s type,” Tonks tells her teacup, and turns her hair peacock green for distraction.

Molly colours. “She sounds perfectly nice, and he needs to settle down and stop being flighty. You young people rely too much on looks. Oh, I don’t mean you, Remus dear, though you’ve got quite a rakish look about you sometimes.”

“Positively dashing,” Tonks drawls, voice brimming over with amusement.

He shakes his soup spoon at her, but she only laughs. Molly looks from one to the other of them with the beginnings of approval, and he ducks his head to avoid her glance. The very last thing they need is for Molly to concoct some notion of romance brewing between him and Tonks; it hasn’t escaped him that she’s grown friendlier while Sirius has been comatose.

Someone knocks on the door and Tonks leans in while Molly goes to investigate, and whispers confidentially, “She’s entirely my type, though,” so that Harry comes in to see them grinning at each other like a pair of loons.

He has grown impossibly tall in the month and half that has passed since Remus saw him last. He has always looked like James, but he has learnt somewhere to carry himself like he’s easy in his own skin, like he’s no longer the screaming boy Remus folded into his arms after Sirius fell and stayed so dreadfully silent in the Room of Death in the Department of Mysteries, but a man grown. Six weeks. This must be how his Dad felt every time Remus came home from Hogwarts. He is aware of Dumbledore bidding his farewells at the door, and of Molly speaking to him and fussing over Harry, and most strongly of Tonks’ grip round his wrist.

Harry says, “Hullo, Remus. Dumbledore said...”

“I was going to write to you,” he says, “tonight. But then I heard you were due, and it seemed wasteful.”

“You’re early, Harry. What’s up?” Tonks pulls out a chair and gets the boy seated. Molly looks a moment at her clock again, and then sets to ladling out soup and cutting up bread and cheese.

“We went to see someone, Mr. Slughorn. Professor Dumbledore wants him to come teach.”

“He got Slughorn to agree? That’s remarkable.”

“Our Harry did it,” Molly says, drawing up a chair. “Dumbledore told me.”

“Did you offer to be collected, then, Harry?” Tonks grins. “What, Dad’s got such stories. He tried to collect Mum, too, and Sirius.”

“He did do that,” Molly agrees. “He always found ways to help his favourites.” They’re crowding the lad, leaning in towards him on either side, and Remus forces himself to lean away, finish the last of his soup.

“He said he’d missed out on him,” Harry says, voice vicious. “Like it’s a set.”

“It was to him,” Remus says, and they all turn to look at him. “The Slug Club. You should ask Sirius about it sometime.”

“When,” Harry begins, voice strangled, and has to stop and draw breath. “When can I see him.”

“In two days,” Remus promises, hoping to make it true; he’s heard enough assurances from Healers in his time to make him sceptical. “A week at most.”

“I want to see him the moment he’s awake.”

“Harry, dear, he might be too weak to have visitors,” Molly says, which is eminently reasonable and Remus would agree in most circumstances, would urge caution and cynicism.

But he loves Harry, has since the moment James brought a swaddled infant out to show his friends, and he remembers both the shape of Harry’s body when it could be gripped whole in both hands and when it had taken him every ounce of strength to hold him back, and he knows how it feels to have your whole world wrapped up in Sirius Black.

So he says, “The very moment, Harry. Upon my honour as a Marauder.”, and then has to rapidly make his goodbyes so he can get outside before his lungs collapse or burst.

Tonks, following him at a more sedate pace, gives him a sardonic look that betrays her maternal ancestry, Metamorphmagus or not. “Molly thinks you’re delicate and overworked. Harry just thinks he was rude.”

“He was no such thing.”

“Oh, I know. I’ve seen you get an attack of the reminisces before this. Lad’s got some command voice on him, though.”

“He does, doesn’t he?” When they were young and stupid, Sirius had found that adding a pinch of powdered aconite to a bottle of Firewhisky would get him smashed when nothing else could; he can’t remember now what species of wolfsbane they’d fixed on. “Not just a Quidditch bellow, something with spine to it.”

“Did James speak like that?”

It’s the obvious connection to make, but not in this case the right one. “No, Lily. She could shut down a Quidditch riot with a single sentence.” He chuckles tiredly, scrubs a hand over his face. “Granted, the sentence was usually a castration threat.”

“My mum did what?” Harry says from the open door, and Tonks offers him a sunny smile and retreats. She planned it. Vixen.

“She did. Vitriolic and colourful, too. Your dad usually earned it, mind.” He doesn’t know what to say, and retreats into sarcasm. “Sirius as well. Right twats, the pair of them.”

Harry says, “You miss them too. I didn’t know, when you taught us.”

“No reason you should ha...” Remus starts, and then can’t speak for the sixteen-year old clutching at him.

Tonks lights a cigarette with the cheerful calm of the righteous, and waves hullo at Arthur Weasley, just coming home from the Ministry.

 

* * *

 

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Fred urges from the fireplace. “George is distracting the Mediwitch, but I think she’s onto him, just come through, will you? Can’t hold this open much longer.”

He stumbles into St. Mungo’s fifth-floor cafeteria in an undershirt and orange trousers he’d been blissfully unaware of owning, just in time to be hustled down the corridor and the staircase by Fred Weasley, to the distant sound of sensible heels in pursuit.

Dasgupta looks at him wide-eyed. “That was fast.”

“Yes, it was, wasn’t it? Not quite one of our better efforts, but it got the job done, so no complaints there. I’m going to go tell Harry and the others, George’s a bit tied-up at the moment. Ta, Lupin.”

“I’ve no excuses for him,” Remus says after Fred’s pelted back down the corridor.

Dasgupta shrugs, and then it’s terrible and still, the sound of the patients’ breathing loud in the night over their muted steps. Sirius is nowhere to be seen.

“We put him in a room of his own, just off Janus Thickey. Rumour has it he’s about to get a number of visitors, and I’d rather not have the other patients disturbed. He doesn’t seem to need looking after, but I’ll be right here all night, so that should be alright. Well, here we are.”

The room in which they have Sirius is small and off to one side, hidden where Janus Thickey abuts the wall, curtained and plush: clearly someone’s office that she’s transfigured into a temporary ward, to judge from the Healers’ portraits on the wall. When he asks her about it, Dasgupta shrugs elaborately and closes the door behind him.

And then he has little thought to spare for possible infarctions of Hospital rules. Sirius is stirring, in the bed beside the window, and struggling to sit up. In later days he will never remember how he gets across the room, but next he knows Remus is perched on the edge of the bed, one arm beneath Sirius’ shoulders and helping him sit up. Sirius smiles at him, tips his head at the carafe of water on the bedside table. He can only manage to drink a very little, with great care, but it seems to ease him enough to settle contentedly back into bed.

Remus, awkward and edging away, moves to claim the armchair beside the bed, clears his throat and says, “Harry will be here any minute; Fred Weasley went to call him.”

“Good lad,” Sirius says, and takes a shuddering breath. “How long?”

“Two months next week. We thought you were going to be here forever.”

“Longbottoms.”

“Yes, like Frank and Alice. You saved their son, you know.”

“Nearchus.”

“Neville, Padders. He’s with Harry in Gryffindor.” He’s heard of people losing their memory after being asleep for days, and Sirius, with the fissures Azkaban has made in him, is a better target than most.

“Tonks?”

“She was injured but she’s fine. Molly Weasley wants her to marry Bill. You remember Bill, titchy little first year who used to care for Prongs’ Quidditch gear. They’re all fine, Sirius, Harry and Hermione and the Weasleys.”

Sirius nods, blinks his eyes shut and settles deeper into his pillows, frowning. “Am I... Azkaban. Am I going back?’

“You’re not.” And it is the best pleasure of his life to be able to tell Sirius this. “You’re free, you’ve been exonerated.”

 Sirius. Merlin. Sirius melts at that, eyes falling open and startled, body relaxing bonelessly. “Moony,” he says, and again, in wonderment, “ _Moony_.”

“You’re a free man, Sirius Black,” and then, because the joy in Sirius’ eyes is indecent, he looks away and laughs a little at the furnishings. “And your nubile young Healer I suspect has a crush on you.”

“Yes,” Sirius says sardonically, and waits till he looks up before gesturing at himself. “I am the subject of every young woman’s dream.”

He looks a right mess, to be honest. His ratty hair has been tied away from his face but the beard still covers most of it, and what can be seen of his cheeks is hollowed out and his eyes are sunken. Remus knows from experience how painfully light he has grown, how his skeleton is birdlike held in both arms. Nothing but pallid skin stretched over fine bones, Sirius Black, who used to be beautiful enough to make you cry.

“Well,” Remus says, judiciously, eyeing the distance between the bed and the armchair, “maybe she has a fetish for sickly middle-aged men. These things do happen.”

Sirius doesn’t even break stride. “You’d know, Moony, that’s how you manage to get your rocks off.”

At this point he is, of course, obliged to retaliate in some fashion, and Sirius is saved from being squashed under a pillow only by the timely arrival of the Weasleys.

And Harry, who pushes past them all to get to Sirius. Remus makes it out of the armchair barely in time, and then realises he might as well not have bothered.

Harry climbs into bed with Sirius, hands clenched into his hospital robes, and face buried against the bony jut of his shoulder. Sirius stares up at him, face open and bewildered, and then looks at Molly, who is standing in the doorway with a storm gathering in her face. He wraps both arms around the boy and tucks him closer.

Molly takes three decisive steps into the room, brushing past Ginny and Hermione. It unlocks something in Remus, and he moves forward, herding Ron ahead of him, and then the girls. Behind him Harry has begun talking to Sirius, in a frantic murmur that Sirius is failing to hush.

He smiles at Molly in his most ingratiating manner. “I think we should go get some tea, don’t you? I barely had any dinner.”

Molly glances at him, and then over his shoulder at the bed, and tuts sharply. “I don’t think...”

“I’m pretty hungry,” Ron says, and Ginny and Hermione nod vigorously.

“Good, it’s settled, then.” He takes Molly’s arm. “How’s Arthur?”

Arthur, it transpires, is doing quite well, if still inevitably busy. Everyone is as well as can be expected, though the house, Molly makes it a point to inform him, is rather full due to the addition of Fleur Delacour, Bill’s French girlfriend. The girls giggle when she is mentioned, and Ginny scowls at Ron, who is blushing lightly. Ah, teenagers; he misses it like he misses the full.

“Actually we’ve just had a bit of excitement,” Molly says, eventually. “The children got their O.W.L.S results this morning.”

“Hermione topped everything, of course,” Ginny grins.

Hermione, predictably, colours and hangs her head. “I didn’t. I got one ‘E’, and I’m sure Padma’s got all ‘O’s.”

“How many subjects did you take?”

“Ten.”

“She got nine ‘O’s,” Ron says, “and she’s actually disappointed about that one ‘E’. Daft.”

Remus, well, he recognises the feeling, not so much in himself as in his memory of Sirius sulking because he hadn’t managed to top the class in Potions, nevermind that everyone had accepted that the true contest there was between Lily and Severus, and nevermind that Sirius had skived off classes several times in his eagerness to avoid Slughorn. He ducks his head to meet her eye, and says, “Nine ‘O’s is a wonderful haul, you know. I only ever managed seven.”

In a very small voice, Hermione admits, “The ‘E’ is in Defence Against the Dark Arts. I’m sorry, Professor.”

He hasn’t taught her in two years, but he’s man enough to admit how wonderful that word is from a student with as much passion for learning as Hermione. “And the worst part is you can’t ask the examiners where you erred, I’ve always thought.”

“Yes! It’s really not fair,” she says. “I deserve to learn from my mistakes.” Molly is sighing at them, and Ron and Ginny, when he glances up, are rolling their eyes in an eerily synchronised move.

“I know,” he says, “that all of you wanted to see Sirius, but he’s barely woken, and I don’t think the excitement’s good for him.” He is sincerely sorry for it, because Hermione and Ron, with their usual attitude towards all Harry’s possessions, regard Sirius as as good as their own; at least it isn’t the twins, who he does not think he would have had the heart to turn away.

Molly, gathering up her children, offers to take Harry along with them, but neither of them can even contemplate for any length the thought of separating the two. It hurts Molly, he thinks, in some unreachable, unreasonable depth of her soul, to know that Harry does not think solely of her and Arthur as his parents, but it is a lovelier fate than many, to suffer from an excess of love.

When he gets back to the fourth floor, Dasgupta’s dozing lightly, her face squashed against a novel. In his private room, Sirius is lying on his side, curled around Harry, moonlight falling on both their faces: Harry looks young and tired in the way only children are, through an exertion of every faculty without reservation. He thinks that they are both asleep, and is very quiet coming in: they have—or, he suspects, Harry has—enlarged the bed to the size of a four-poster and there is scarcely any space. When he was at Hogwarts, all of them had had the tendency to pile into one bed after the full, but he shudders to think what the Healers or Weasleys would make of it, and he’s slept in worse places than the plush armchair beside the bed.

When he has all but fallen asleep, Sirius wakens to growl, “Morgan’s tits, man, are you a wizard or not,” and tosses him Harry’s wand.

The room is, upon examination, just big enough to fit an extra cot into.

 

* * *

 

 

Harry is gone by the time he wakes, and Sirius is sprawled across the bed with his chin in one hand, examining him soberly.

“What,” he yawns, “did I do to deserve scrutiny?”

“You look ill,” Sirius says. “When’s the full?”

“Day after tomorrow. Where’s Harry?”

“Bill Weasley came and got him an hour ago. What’re you doing for the full?”

“It’s wonderful to see,” he drawls, “how little almost dying has done to alter your innate disposition.”

“Yes,” Sirius allows, “I’m a dog with a bone. Ha ha. So, what are you doing for the full?”

“I’m going to the Shack. Drop it, Padfoot.”

Sirius subsides, grumbling. “I don’t like it.”

“I don’t particularly enjoy the thought of ripping myself apart either, but I fail to see what liking has to do with anything. None of us liked you nearly dying.” It is perhaps unfair of him to bring that up, but he is—he thinks justifiably—touchy about the full. He had had the chance of a year’s worth of Changes with Padfoot, and the last two moons have served to remind him how little Moony likes solitude. But he can hardly, after all, spend the full curled at the foot of Sirius’ hospital bed.

“Harry thinks it was very close,” Sirius says after a while. “But it’s too close to him, he can’t be expected to maintain objectivity.”

For a long moment Remus wonders whether he’s expected to behave as though he can, and then dismisses it as a bit of Padfoot’s usual defensive nonsense. And the truth, after all, is bad enough. “You nearly went through the Veil. If Harry had been slower or if Bellatrix had been less intent on escape, you would have been dead, and we wouldn’t even have had a corpse to bury.”

“Harry caught me? I remember...” He pauses for breath, paying for the excitement in his voice. “I remember falling.”

“Thank Merlin the boy’s a Seeker,” Remus says, and Sirius grins.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, “of getting the lad a new broom for his birthday. What’s new now?”

“Sirius, he’s got the best broom in the business. That’s what professional teams use.”

“I’ll ask Tonks,” Sirius says, and Remus makes a mental note to get to Tonks before he does; it might not help, of course, given that the two bonded from their first encounter, but he hasn’t got to be thirty-six without perseverance in the face of impossible odds.

“Sirius, he’s got the best broom in the business,” he reiterates, and holds up a hand to stall him. “But he’s still wandering around in hand-me-downs from his cousin most of the time, it’s a disgrace and unnecessary to boot.”

“You want me to give him clothes for his birthday?”

The disdain in Sirius’ voice is clear enough to be a deterrent, or should be. But Remus has watched Harry roll up sleeves and trouser-legs and wander round in jumpers that drown him more often than he likes, and he’s barely ever around the boy; the only time he looks halfway well-dressed is in his uniform, and that in itself is a terrible thing. And he doesn’t need to, but clothes are not the sort of thing a boy buys with his own money, however much of it he might have.

“It’s the boring sort of thing a parent is supposed to do,” he says, and leans back to watch his pronouncement affect Sirius.

After five minutes of sulking—pouting, frowning, kicking one foot aimlessly against the covers, all the classic signs of a Padfoot SulkTM, and Remus has to hide a smile—Sirius sighs and says, “I’ll get Tonks to get him an account at Twillfit and Tattings and you can have him rigged out, does that suit, Your Prefectship?”

“Perfectly,” he says, and leans forward a trifle precariously to pat Sirius patronisingly on the head. “Good dog.” Sirius tries to bite his fingers, and earns himself a swat on the nose. “Bad dog.”

“Oh, and I was so looking forward to a bone. Moony? There’s a vial on the table beside you... no, the purple one, could you?” His throat works convulsively for a second. “Thanks.”

“What’s the dosage?” It’s a little thing, completely covered in Sirius’ loose fist, and cannot possibly be all there is of it: Sirius, even after the night’s rest, looks weakly pallid.

“Every other hour, the Healer administered the first dose in the morning; woke Harry right up. It keeps my throat clear.”

“You shouldn’t talk so much, then.”

“It isn’t exacerbated by talking. Harry asked her.” He looks impossibly proud. “I think something in green, for his eyes.”

“You know he’ll go in rags before he wears Slytherin colours, Padders. I’ll think of something, leave it be.”

Miraculously, Sirius listens to him, flipping to lie flat on his back and staring at the ceiling. By the light, it’s going on ten, and he should be on his way: he has a list of things he needs to run through before the full, and Sirius has just inadvertently added to it. But it is sweet, to be able to lie beside Sirius, unspeaking and warm, while the moon sings in his blood. It is almost like being young, and he wants to reach out and haul Sirius closer, put an ear to his chest and listen to the blood beating beneath his skin. It is so strange to have Sirius awake and beside him that he wants to be sure of it every way he can.

When he thinks him certainly asleep, Sirius says, “Harry got seven O.W.L.S. Five ‘E’s. Only the one ‘O’, but I suppose he had other things to think of.”

“You can hire him a tutor before his N.E.W.T.S if you want,” he says lazily, and is caught off-guard by Sirius drawing breath in a gasp.

“I can,” he says, happier with it than anyone should be about subjecting his child to further studying.

“Hermione got nine ‘O’s,” Remus says meanly, and moves before Sirius can retaliate. He is armoured against happiness, but, he is beginning to realise, not nearly well enough.

 

* * *

 

 

The next few days go very badly.

It is sad how easily he had become used to Padfoot nosing at his side after thirteen years of solitary transformations, but Moony feels bereft without him, and, from what he can judge by the swathe of destruction in the Shack, furious beyond the telling of it. He cannot remember when last he was this angry, or would like to pretend that he does not. Still, fifteen years is a long time to go without murderous rage for most people, and they largely haven’t the excuse of turning into a slavering monster every month. This time it is even worse than usual, now that he knows that Sirius is awake and about and could perhaps have come to him. He has not had Wolfsbane in years, Severus not having resumed the service and Remus being too poor to even contemplate market rates. On the morning of the third day he manages to get himself to Hagrid’s hut after the Change, and considers it a great feat.

He wakes in the Hospital Wing, tucked between clean, cool sheets that are blissful against his newly-healed wounds. By the light it is early afternoon. Poppy is at his side almost before he is fully awake, and he lets her fuss over him with an apathetic sort of gratitude, and quietly devours the vast meal she’s had the House Elves prepare for him. When he was young, he had always woken famished and thoroughly incapable of eating for hours afterwards; James and Sirius had known as early as fourth year that they would have to raid the kitchens in the evening when Remus finally felt settled in his skin: he had always shied away from eating monstrously in the Great Hall, lest someone put it together with his absences and arrive at lycanthropy. But he’s had too many years of going without for his body to even attempt rejecting food now, at whatsoever time.

After the meal—salted liberally with Strengthening Salts, if he’s any judge—he feels able to get about and Poppy, though she scowls most ferociously, lets him loose after subjecting him to a barrage of tests. But it hasn’t been a bad moon, for all that he’s gnawed at the furniture like a teething pup, it has merely been miserable: a very literal blue moon, he thinks to himself; Sirius will enjoy the joke, puerile as it is.

 

* * *

 

 

The Burrow is wall-to-wall Weasley, nary a different coloured hair to be seen, and he wonders at his wonderment of it: Harry hasn’t any friends but Ron and Hermione, and he’s hardly an expert on these things, but there seems to be no readying even to take Harry to St. Mungo’s.

Molly looks surprised to see him, which hurts obscurely and rather more than it rightly should. He takes his piece of cake and retreats into the corner that holds Bill Weasley and Fleur, who eases the heart simply by being her shining self, and then further by widening her eyes at the sight of him and conjuring a glass of wine to pass to him almost before he’s taken a seat.

“You ’ave ’ad some bad days,” she says, and adds in a conspiratorial voice, “My grandmere is a Veela, you see, I comprehend these theengs.”

Bill takes her hand and kisses it, while Remus manages what he is sure is an execrably tentative smile. In his haste to cover for the gaffe he says, “Everyone’s having bad days. There’ve been another couple of Dementor attacks, and I hear they’ve found Karkaroff’s body in a shack up north.”

It is exactly the right—or wrong—thing to say: Bill and he hardly have a moment of quiet after that, and he wonders a trifle guiltily, looking at Molly’s unhappy face, whether she has forbidden all discussion of Dark matters in her home. It isn’t unusual, his own mother had tried it, with about as little success: children, whatever their parents think, usually want to be aware much rather than safe, and for Harry it has never been much of a choice. He can see why Molly would want it otherwise, of course, but he’s had rather a lot of wine and it’s entirely possible he’s just being a maudlin drunk: it’s entirely possible that Molly’s glaring at him because she thinks he’s inappropriately inebriated. He probably is, and should be on his way.

Harry comes up to him as he’s shrugging his cloak on. “Are you going to St. Mungo’s?”

“I am,” he says, and gentler, “Aren’t you?”

“If you’ll take me. Bill was going to, yesterday, but then something came up.” And Molly, very sensibly, hasn’t let him wander on his own. Well, but the lad could have used the Floo. No use thinking on it, though.

“We’ll have to Apparate. Do you know how to Side-Along, Harry?”

They emerge in a barren little alley behind the hospital, both a little winded. A Muggle huddled into cardboard boxes looks at them strangely, and then shakes his head and goes back to his joint. Thank Merlin for addicts. Speaking to the mannequin always leaves him a trifle uneasy, and it is a bit of a relief to see Harry looking similarly queasy about it.

Within, the hospital is the same as ever, and if Remus flinches minutely from the close company of so many people it is his concern and his alone. On their way up he thinks he catches sight of a familiar vulture-topped hat, but Harry has pushed ahead resolute and unseeing, and he isn’t quite brave enough, in any case, to brave Augusta Longbottom on her way home from seeing her son and daughter-in-law. Neville has just turned sixteen, too, and that must have been a gathering to make Harry’s seem a proper circus.

Tonks is sitting with Sirius, which immediately eases Remus’ unstated anxiety that nobody at all has looked in on him in three days. There is a veritable pile of presents heaped on the bedside table. It was too much to have thought Sirius would be sensible about it. Harry goes a little shy, at his shoulder, and edges into the room almost reluctantly.

“These,” Sirius says when they’re barely seated and Remus’ chair half-remembers that it used to be a potion vial, “are not your proper gift; that’ll have to wait on Remus’ leisure or on my being discharged. So don’t worry I’m shortchanging you.”

“And not all of them are from him,” Tonks says, which seems to relax Harry a tad.

“There is that. Go on, lad.”

When he was young, Remus had always found the receiving of gifts an intolerable annoyance, especially after he was at Hogwarts and likely to be spied on by three rambunctious boys of whom two thought nothing of giving him gifts he could never match. Sirius is plainly still as generous about giving gifts and quite as eager about spotting reactions, but with Harry there is little to fear in the way of unpleasant surprises on that account. The boy gleams, clearly overwhelmed and clearly happily so, as he unwraps package after badly-wrapped package of sparkling paper. Sirius must have bought up quite half of Diagon for him: there are bottles of colour-changing ink, Dicta-Quills, any number of pranks from Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes, an enormous package of Ice Mice, a rain-shedding cloak from Quality Quidditch Supplies and a warming draught in a monogrammed flask that Harry looks at in undisguised horror and shoves under his chair. Then there are two packages remaining, of which one turns out to be dragon-hide gloves from Tonks.

Sirius looks at him before handing over the last one, which is enough to set alarm ringing through his mind even before Tonks says, far too smugly for it to be anything good, “And this one’s from Remus, Harry.” Harry turns to look at him in surprised gratitude while he’s struggling not to glare at Sirius. Blacks; nothing good comes of trusting them nor ever has.

Sirius grimaces at him safely away from Harry’s range of vision, and drawls, “Well, open it, we’re all agog.”

It’s... a book, thank Merlin. A nice, respectable, leather-clad tome on... ah, Defensive Spells for the Seasoned Duellist. That one’s actually quite a good text, come to think. “Thought you should... get to know some advanced spells now that you’ve mastered the basics,” he manages a little lamely, and Harry nods, quite immersed in turning the pages.

Tonks wrests it from him, flipping through with a professional distance. “Should be handy in teaching your little class, Harry. Not that I know anything about all of that. Here, Sirius, what do you think of it?”

“Looks very nice. Oh, they’re actually using... here, Moony, didn’t the Prewetts come up with this one? You’ve a better memory than I.” He doesn’t let go of the book, and Remus has to switch seats with Tonks to perch on the bed, shoulder to shoulder with Sirius, to look over the glossy pages of the text. It’s a far better edition than he could have afforded, but he would have liked to give it to Harry, and Sirius is trying so very hard that he finds the annoyance leeching from him. The spell in question, however, has not been created by any Prewetts of their mutual acquaintance, and he spends quite some time informing Sirius of this while Harry ignores them to read his new book and Tonks crawls back onto the bed and runs through her stock of faces.

It is the day after the Change, and he has put his still-healing body through two Apparitions, the second with a passenger. He wakes curled neatly on Sirius’ bed, with Sirius himself tucked in the armchair going through a Weasleys’ catalogue with worrying concentration. Harry and Tonks are nowhere to be seen.

“Tonks took him away to feed him. They’re not sure where he’s spending the night. Ah, brilliant, they’ve perfected Daydream Charms, that always gave us some trouble, remember?”

“I’m sorry, I hadn’t.”

“Meant to drool into my shoulder? No, I didn’t think you did. How was the full?”

“About the usual. Sirius, about the book. It’s truly nice of you to have...”

Sirius marks his place in the catalogue and sets it aside, leaning forward. “Are you going to thank me for having Tonks buy a book for you to give Harry while you were breaking your body twice in three days, despite you having actually managed to bring Harry to me today when I was almost sure I wouldn’t get to see him on his birthday?”

“I. I don’t suppose I shall, if you phrase it like that.”

“Good,” Sirius says, expression grave and unsmiling. “A good answer, Lupin.”

This time there’s nobody to save Sirius from being stifled with his own pillows.


End file.
